Cover Photo by Haven Fricke-Smyth Copyright Eureka Poet Laureate 2020 Independently Published All works contained in this volume remain the material of the authors who wrote them. This poetry collection is dedicated to our neighbors and community members who have passed from COVID-19. May your numbers remain few, and your memories live long. Table of Contents L. F. Allen, Refugee. .9 R. Allen, Raptured. .10 G. Bee, The morning of April 7th after COVID-19. .11 M. Bickford, The Fallowing. 14 S. Bigham, Weathering the Storm. 17 L. Birdsong, No More Doing To Be Done. .18 S. Bloch-Welliver, White Fog. 20 S. Brooks,Virulent. 21 W. Butler, Personal neuroses and pandemic. .22 D. N. Chinn, In the Shadow of Waiting. .23 L. Crist, An Introvert Laments. .27 D. Collins, Meet me on the corner. .29 T. Fitzmaurice, April 18, 2020. .32 J. Floss, The Trouble with Pibbles. .34 M. Franco, Do What You Love. .35 A. Fricke, Rehearsal May Be Over. 37 S. Gallisdorfer, Alone in Quarantine. 39 M. Genger, Blame. 40 S. Gibson, What I did not know I needed in 5 parts. 42 K. Harris, cherry sutra. .45 K. Hellum, surrender. .47 D. Holper, Bord för En. 49 I. Jewett, Pandemic. 50 D. Kearns, Grieving Our Whole Family. 52 Z. Levinson, Psalm for Surreal Ceremony. 53 J. Marak, Distancing. 54 J. Martien, Prayer. 55 P. McCutcheon, Gaia’s Rage. .56 K. Nunes-Siciliani, This Wasn't Supposed to be a Love Poem. 58 V. Peloso, Latex Gloves. .61 W. Schmit, I Startle Osprey. .63 J. Shermis, Dreams of Light. .65 J. Suskin, The Choice of Service. 66 N. Tarpey, A Lot on Her Plate. .67 D. Tisdell, What Covid Took from Me. .68 I. Unsinger, Connection Failure. .70 R. Lenning, Grapefruit in a Global Pandemic. 72 A. Veronese, The Ceiling Stares Back (but never answers). 75 J. Williams, Lost in Calamity. .77 A. Wood, Covideo. 78 Contributors. .81 The lion is a god. The virus is a god. We’re going to the woods to pray. -Jerry Martien from “Prayer” Refugee Lsara Firefox Allen You are in your distant, sparkly, smelly city celebrating your six-month anniversary during Shelter in Place and you are sad We never stop being parents and I wish I could change all this for you “All this,” I say, and imagine I am waving my hands around gesticulating wildly at the very air we breathe You are out there in that shiny city air and I wish I could change the fact that global warming and pandemics are the cold war of your generation Except now the war is heating up and global warming brings nightmares larger than a mushroom cloud we are already climate refugees home no longer exists it has been eaten by fire 9 Raptured Robert Allen The rider came frenzied on a pale horse and his name was pestilence. Other riders, held for a moment, then flung the deathly themselves back to other violences. This is what it comes to, what fear is; a white horse, a disease, and,alone, the way the fury of the long night comes on. 10 The morning of April 7th after COVID-19 Greg Bee I drive to the North Jetty at 2:04am PDT. I can’t sleep. I have a perfectly good “shelter,” but the “in place” part is something I’ve never been able to figure out. I come to this same spot on the Jetty when I feel unsure of what to do next. No matter what is going on with me, or the world, this place stays the same. The ocean is always there. It makes the same sounds, I watch the same crash. (When the day comes that I drive to this spot, and the ocean is gone, that’s when I’ll know we can just say, “fuck it,” and be done with the whole thing!) Right now the tide is rough. Humboldt overcast covers every star in the sky. This is literally what I’m seeing, not a metaphor for hard times or uncertainty in the future, although it would be a good one. Maybe this place knows how to make its own metaphors. Maybe this world knows what to do without us. Maybe it will be just fine when we’re gone. Maybe right now, all we need to do is listen to the waves as they crash, cook Sunday dinner and tell the people in our lives that we love them. Shelter in a way that doesn’t say, “I’m afraid,” in a place where you’d rather say, “I’m trying the best I can,” instead of, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing.” At 2:31am PDT I wonder if I can sit here until the sun 11 comes up over the ocean. I wonder if I could sit here with you on a blanket until 6:49am like that time we did in Asbury Park, we counted 7 shooting stars that we BOTH saw, I knew that if I just held you there a little longer it would make everything better but YOU said, “We should get going.” I know that no matter how hard I try you will not sit here with me, no matter how hard I try the sun will not rise over the Pacific Ocean. But I still wonder. (In that last part, I started sounding like Buddy Wakefield at the end of Convenience Stores in my head a little, it was unintentional, read it again if you didn’t hear it.) At 2:42am PDT I think about how tragic it would be if I didn’t take off my shoes and socks and dip my feet in the water. How tragic it would be if I didn’t feel the wet sand between my toes the last time I ever came to the North Jetty to think things over. So I take them off, one by one and run off to dip them in, And as I get closer to the water it feels like the ocean is receding, with every step the water is somehow further away. I run faster and I am so scared that there is a tsunami waiting to crash down around me. I’m scared that god is hiding there. Neither Omnipotent nor Benevolent, just hiding there, the way cowards do. My feet feel a beautiful splash of water and I rejoice! I let the moment pass without acknowledging it. 12 I turn around and start sprinting back to my car. I don’t know if I’m running away from a Tsunami or god or Humboldt County, The love of my life or lifetime of regrets. Maybe I just love to run. Maybe it feels good to move my body this way after spending the day in bed, and after however many weeks we’ve been living this way. Maybe viruses aren’t the only things that want to spread. Maybe it’s okay to love the run and at 3:08am PDT I can confidently say that it doesn’t have to be towards, or away from, anything. It can just be on the beach, for fun, to make you feel something other than boring. To let you know the things you want are always there, even when it’s raining or cold, or you just don't feel like going. 13 The Fallowing Michael Bickford (with acknowledgements to Billie Holiday & Abel Meeropol) These fallowed fields frame our time, the structure of our soil redefined untilled, until the flood we know will come. Well-worked before the blight, we test its tilth in silent streets quiescent public spaces. But the abandonment is hollow only surface-bare, the buildings bleed so thick they are with life and longing. Still we shelter in our private places: the flesh retreats to salty sallow bones of sickness and regret. In desperation we borrow the youth of our children’s lives, secretly reverse our parents’ mortgage, and pawn grandparents’ legacy for booze. All to justify, preserve the privileged past. The bill is due. Ironic elect-ronic comics co-mix on the air, virus protection severed at the head, logic circuits shorted-out with hairspray, spurring minions on to armed denial: Open up! Damn the data! Full speed ahead! Yo! Gallows crooners! Sing to the gallery! Appeal for more applause as trapdoors drop and body-bags of new Strange Fruit are hanged 14 from pure white yardarms of The Good Ship Hope, its red double-crosses spawning tent-morgues. Embalmed. Becalmed. Fallowed. Now the fever fills the lungs and shallow, intubated breathing clings to life. We cultivate, we culturate, evacuate occult blood from our bowels as all around us human tallow drips and draws the sea-salt sorrow from our eyes. Ground-fog rises to lowering sea-clouds, the vampire mist is brighter than their slate as dawn-light splits the air from darkened hills, grey rainbows wet the backs of fatted calves: the morning comes, yet no one wakes. We sleep. Fallowed. These naked fields will in time be fecund. Weeds that we call crops will intercede. Though oceans we pretend to rule are beckoned by our fires to salt the seeded shore, the earth below, slow burning, will explode. Our culture is at work at home the culture of the loam the tunnels of the worms the nematodes of joy the nodes of nitro-fixing germs we till to live we live until, untilled, we fallow. 15 How will the callow children of this night begin to find their hallows of delight? 16 Weathering the Storm Stephanie Bigham Like the rain they fell.